mental health

Adult colouring books have been all the rage in the field of mental health for the last few years, said to decrease stress and increase mindful living by encouraging the person colouring-in to slow down and enjoy the moments of life. As well as being a pleasurable activity, new research has shown that daily colouring is becoming a creative way of helping to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

To carry out the research, they randomly assigned 115 women participants with either a booklet containing 10 pictures to colour in (including abstract shapes, nature images and mandalas) or a booklet of puzzles, including logic problems, Sudoku and word searches. They all filled out an inventory of their perceived levels of depression, anxiety, stress, resilience and mindfulness. They filled in this survey again a week later, after doing puzzles or colouring-in for 10 minutes a day.

The results showed that while both groups had become more mindful, there was a difference in mood for the group who did the colouring-in. The participants showed reported a reduction in their depressive and anxious symptoms, suggesting that the activity of colouring-in has more mental-health benefits than had previously been believed.

Study joint author Dr Tamlin Conner said: “Our findings bode well for the potential psychological benefits of colouring-in. In this way, colouring-in could be considered an act of everyday ‘little ‘c’’ creativity, in much the same way as gardening or gourmet cooking. With its low risk and accessibility, we feel comfortable adding colouring-in to the growing list of creative activities for improving mental health outcomes.”

Exercise is known to boost your mood and make you feel better: it’s hard to feel low or anxious when you’re working up a sweat in the gym or fitness studio. Exercise builds resilience and helps you release negative stuff you’ve been holding onto. Yet recent research has aimed to quantify this feeling by examining how you exercise and the way it links with your emotional wellbeing and quality of life.

The study – published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Foundation– found exercising on your own means you try harder but won’t necessarily feel any fitter or any less stressed. Work out in a group, however, and this can bring your stress levels down and improve your quality of life. The research was carried out among 69 medical students, a group known to suffer higher stress levels – though the results of the study can be applied to a general population.

Participants chose either a group or individual exercise programme over 12 weeks. Every four weeks they filled out a survey regarding their levels of perceived stress and quality of life in three aspects: mental, physical and emotional.

At the end of the 12 weeks, those participating in structured weekly group exercise showed a 26% reduction in their stress levels. They also reported an improvement in all three quality of life measures: mental (13%), physical (25%) and emotional (26%). They also reported a 26.2 percent reduction in perceived stress levels. In contrast, those who chose their own fitness regime and worked out whenever they wanted – by themselves – saw no significant changes in any measure, except in mental quality of life (11% increase).

Drawing a conclusion from the findings, Dr Dayna Yorks from the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, and lead researcher on this study, said: “These findings should not be interpreted as a condemnation of individual exercise. We believe much benefit can be derived from physical exercise of any kind, but the addition of group fitness classes may have additional benefits. The communal benefits of coming together with friends and colleagues, and doing something difficult, while encouraging one another, pays dividends beyond exercising alone.”

There’s an old adage that says holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. The refusal to forgive another for the perceived wrongs they’ve done against you may keep you on the moral high ground, but ultimately you could remain stuck, stressed and strung out. Forgiving the other means letting them off, and so you hold on tight to your sense of what’s right and wrong.

Researchers from Luther College analysed the stress exposure, lifestyle factors, propensity to forgive, and physical and mental factors among 148 people. They concluded that people who are more forgiving are also more able to handle stress, and that “stress degrades and forgiveness protects” health. They added: ” Developing a more forgiving coping style may help minimise stress-related disorders.”

How so? More research may be needed to determine exactly how forgiveness provides a buffer from stress – but there is something healing about letting go of painful and resentful feelings regarding a situation. It’s not about letting the person get away with it. It’s about not letting your feelings consume your life.

Lead researcher Professor Loren Touissant from Luther College said: “More forgiving individuals may have a more adaptive or extensive repertoire of coping strategies that mitigate the negative effects of stress on health… People with higher levels of forgivingness also have a greater tendency to use problem-focused coping and cognitive restructuring, and are less likely to use rumination, emotional expression and wishful thinking.”

In summary, forgiveness means making the decision to let something go instead of torturing yourself by over-thinking it and wishing life could be different.

Anxious people tend to over-generalise in their response to emotional experiences. (pic courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net/StuartMiles)

If you suffer anxiety, chances are you’re more highly attuned to threats, and find it difficult to manage heightened emotion when you feel unsafe. New research shows that anxious people don’t just follow the “better safe than sorry” rule. It’s the way their brains work when it comes to discriminating between what’s threatening and what’s safe that’s the issue. In short, they ‘overgeneralise’

Researchers from the Weizzman Institute of Science in Israel asked people with anxiety to associate three different sound tones with three different outcomes. One was money loss, one money gain, and one was no consequence. They then heard new tones and had to decide if they’d heard the tone before. If correct, they won money. Anxious people were more likely to believe they’d heard one of the new tones earlier – and were more likely to mistake that tone for one associated with money loss or gain. No participant had a hearing issue, and so the difference in perception was due to linking differently to an emotional experience. In the real world, this means that anxious people don’t or can’t differentiate between new and old stimuli, and they can over-generalise an emotional experience whether it is new, old or threatening.

Study lead Rony Paz said: “Anxiety patients respond emotionally to such new stimuli as well, resulting in anxiety even in apparently irrelevant new situations. Importantly, they cannot control this, as it is a perceptual inability to discriminate.”

Research says the brain structure governing emotion can be passed down from mother to daughter (pic courtesy of nenetus/freedigitalphotos.net)

The structure in the brain that governs emotion – including susceptibility and resistance to depression – is more likely to be passed from mother to daughter than from mother to son, or from fathers to their children, according to new research carried out at the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF).

The study examined MRI scans of the corticolimbic system in the brain, which regulates and processes emotion, and has a part to play in mood disorders such as depression, to examine the relationship between generations. The researchers looked at these brain structures within 35 families, and say that the findings suggest the first evidence that depression can be passed on from mothers to daughters.

Women are statistically more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety than men. However, this new study does not say that mothers will automatically pass depression onto their daughters. Lead author Fumiko Hoeft, a UCSF associate professor of psychiatry, said: “The finding does not mean that mothers are necessarily responsible for their daughters’ depression. Many factors play a role in depression: genes that are not inherited from the mother, social environment, and life experiences, to name only three. Mother-daughter transmission is just one piece of it.”

Making food more fun won’t necessarily help to ‘cure’ children’s picky eating (pic courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net/marcolm)

Food is often one of the first areas of life that kids can take control of. They can kick and scream when served anything green, or refuse to eat anything that isn’t served on their favourite plate. They might complain about the smell, the taste, the texture, and wrinkle their little noses in disgust. That kids mess around with food and sometimes refuse to eat it is not anything new. But rather than waiting for children to ‘grow out of it’, scientists are urging parents to do something about it, because picky eating – or ‘selective eating’ (SE) – has now been linked to mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and social anxiety. And girls are more susceptible than boys.

The research from Duke University among 917 children aged between two and five found that SE was reported by 20.3%, with 17.7% reporting moderate SE (a restricted diet only) and another 3% reporting severe SE (a restricted diet that limited their ability to eat with others). The study found that “moderate and severe levels of SE were associated with psychopathological symptoms (anxiety, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) both concurrently and prospectively”. The more severe the levels of SE, the higher the likelihood of mental conditions. Children with severe cases of picky eating were more than twice as likely to develop depression. Two other significant findings were that high maternal anxiety existed with children who had moderate or severe SE. And severe picky eaters were more likely to be girls than boys.

The researchers even go as far as saying that the term ‘picky eating’ is obsolete when the selective eating is moderate or severe – as the fact that children are eating selectively implies that they need some help. They instead think the condition should be labelled with the diagnosis used by psychiatrists (DSMV) as ‘avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder’. This doesn’t mean parents need to panic if their little one spits out a piece of carrot. It is just a way of remaining vigilant if problems persist or become deeper and more consistent – and seeking further advice and help where needed.